Reston  Visitors to the Reston Library may have noticed the exterior looking a bit neater since Wednesday, March 7, thanks to the efforts of the Reston Garden Club in partnership with Hidden Lane Landscaping. Members of the club spent the day clearing brush, shrubs and dead grass, while maintaining beds and laying down mulch.

"We used to do most of our work along Bowman Towne Drive as part of our Adopt-A-Highway commitment, but gradually we started getting closer to the library," said club member Barbara Pelzner.

Photo by Alex McVeigh

Members of the Reston Garden Club clean up around the Reston Library Wednesday, March 7.

The club started coordinating with Peter Murray, owner and president of Hidden Lane, in January. Murray is no stranger to helping out the community, Hidden Lane has done landscaping work for the Embry Rucker Community Shelter’s garden, including a children’s vegetable garden.

"We feel like the library is one of the signature locations in this community, so it’s something we want to look good," Murray said. "By cutting back all the grass, providing some new trees and edging and mulching the bed, this place is going to be much more appealing."

Other funding was provided by the Friends of Reston Library for several of the trees that will be planted.

As piles of brush and other dead foliage grew larger, library patrons who showed up just before the building’s 1 p.m. opening time noticed the change from their last visit.

"It looks so much cleaner, the building is more visible and it looks maintained rather than a wild preserve," said Janet Montgomery, who comes to the library every few days. "As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I just felt something was different, and once you see the huge amount of stuff being taken away, it really shows how wild the landscaping had become."

Hidden Lane also took care of transporting the brush away from the library.

"We’ll take the debris to the dump, where it can be turned into mulch," Murray said. "One of our goals here was not to generate extra waste, so we wanted to make sure the debris could be turned into something productive."

Club member Julie Bond said as patrons of the library, the club had a personal interest in the work.

"For the last two years, we’ve noticed the growth and wanted to make this entrance look a little nicer," she said. "But without the support of this community, Peter, the library and groups like the Friends of the Reston Library, we wouldn’t have been able to pull this together so quickly."